GABRIELE MÜNTER

THE KANDINSKY YEARS – PICTURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

The famous Blauer Reiter painter is being presented in her little-known role as a photographer for the first time in Hanover. The exhibition, mounted by the Lenbachhaus in Munich, includes photos from her time together with Wassily Kandinsky in the period between 1902 and the First World War. 

The first images capture the young student’s time in Kandinsky’s private art school, Phalanx, and the summer excursions undertaken by the painting class to Kochel and Kallmünz in 1903. The photographs of her trips with Wassily Kandinsky, to whom she was by now ‘engaged’, which took place over several years between 1904 and 1908, to Holland, Tunisia, Dresden, Rapallo and Paris, form another focus of the exhibition. It becomes clear that Münter’s unique way of seeing, her clear, synoptical gaze, also shapes her photographs into points of departure for some of her paintings and graphic works. For example, Münter reworked her shots of Tunis street scenes and of the beach at Rapallo in her sketchbooks, woodcuts and paintings. Even Kandinsky sometimes relied on her precisely focused photos for his works. 

The show continues with scenes from Murnau, featuring many beautiful images of her much-loved house there, which she bought in 1909. There are countless images of the Murnau house, showing its interior and exterior, garden and inhabitants; these sit alongside photographs of the shared flat in Ainmillerstraße in Schwabing, Munich’s artist quarter.

Gabriele Münter’s photographic work ultimately makes her the most significant chronicler of the Blauer Reiter group, a status secured both by the well-known shots of the group of friends, and by her precise photographic documentation of the group’s famous first exhibition. Remarkably, Münter’s interest in photography was curtailed by the outbreak of the First World War and the end of her relationship with Kandinsky; the last traces of her photographic activity include the occasional photograph of fellow artists and of exhibitions in Sweden up until 1917.

The photographs shown in the exhibition come from the collection of the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation. They are accompanied by paintings and graphic works by the artist and by her partner, Kandinsky. A colourful and fascinating picture of their shared life and their private relationship emerges, depicted in a hitherto unseen and intensely personal form.